Homelessness

Off the street.Into treatment. Into a home.

More Mainers are living outside, in tents and cars and doorways, than Maine has ever counted. One answer doesn't fit three different problems, and every dollar should be judged by how many people it gets off the street for good.

Sources: Maine Homeless Planning, 2026 Point-in-Time report; Bangor Daily News, July 16, 2026

Three problems

One answer doesn't fit all three.

Our Articles of Incorporation commit us to strategies that deal separately with three groups of people. They need different things, and the research says so. Our purposes

1. Serious mental illness.

   Treatment beds, crisis care, and a team that comes to the person and keeps coming back. In randomized trials, that kind of team, called assertive community treatment, cut homelessness 37 percent more than ordinary case management. A tent is not a treatment plan.

2. Addiction, and the revolving door.

   Treatment first, sober housing after, and courts that send people to recovery instead of back to the street. In 2025, 49 of the 391 people who died of overdoses in Maine had no home. So far this year it's about one in seven.

3. Out of work and out of a home.

   A fast path back: a room, a job, a lease. In Chicago, people who called for one-time emergency help with rent while the money lasted were 76 percent less likely to end up in a shelter than people who called after it ran out. Most people in this group need a bridge, not a program for life.

Sources: Coldwell and Bender, American Journal of Psychiatry, 2007 (review of trials); Maine Attorney General and University of Maine, Maine Monthly Overdose Report, July 2026; Evans, Sullivan and Wallskog, Science, 2016

Who goes first

Children first. Then people ready to work.

Maine decides who gets housing help with a 16-point score. Most of the points go to how long someone has been homeless and whether they're sleeping outside. There are no points for a diagnosis. But the most intensive help goes to the highest scores, and federal rules reserve it for people with a disability. A mother with two children who lost her apartment last month scores far below someone who has been outside for two years, and she's steered to a voucher list or short-term help.

The rules already allow better. Federal coordinated entry guidance lets a community weight “the risk of immediate harm higher for households with young children.” Maine's scoring sheet doesn't. It should, and it should give weight to people who are ready to work, so a short stay in a shelter stays short.

Voucher waiting lists already get this right. MaineHousing gives families of two or more the same preference as elderly and disabled households, and the Portland Housing Authority gives a family with children 5 points, against 1 for being homeless.

Sources: Maine Continuum of Care, Coordinated Entry Assessment and scoring sheet (rev. July 2024); Maine Continuum of Care, Dynamic Prioritization referral policy, approved June 2025; 24 C.F.R. §578.37, permanent supportive housing; U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, FY2026 Continuum of Care funding notice (CPD-2600-DC-0025); U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Notice CPD-17-01 (coordinated entry); MaineHousing, Housing Choice Voucher Administrative Plan, March 1, 2026; Portland Housing Authority, waiting list preference points

The landlord who says yes

When a placement fails, the landlord pays for it.

When a subsidized tenancy fails, the subsidy stops. A housing authority must end a family's voucher after an eviction for a serious lease violation, and the landlord is left with the security deposit, capped at two months' rent in Maine and one in Portland, and a lawsuit against a tenant who usually can't pay. Counting the unpaid rent, legal costs, vacancy, and repairs, one eviction can cost a small landlord $10,000 or more at today's rents.

Small landlords, already carrying higher heating, power, and tax bills, have little room for a loss that size. So fewer of them say yes, and fewer apartments open up for the people these programs exist to house.

Sources: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Housing Choice Voucher contract (form HUD-52641); 24 C.F.R. §982.552, ending voucher assistance; Humphries, Nelson, Nguyen, van Dijk and Waldinger, NBER Working Paper 33155 (the cost of an eviction to landlords); Portland Housing Authority, landlord incentives (the state program ended December 31, 2025); MaineHousing, January 13, 2022 (landlord incentive program); 14 M.R.S. §6032, maximum security deposit; City of Portland, rent control FAQ (October 2025)

Follow the money

Paid by the bed and by the client. Not by who gets home.

Here is how Maine's main shelter grant is divided, from MaineHousing's own 2026 guide.

The guide does set real targets: move people into housing within 150 days, and see at least 65 percent of them leave for a permanent home, with more time and a lower bar for shelters that take everyone. A shelter that misses the targets gets monitoring and technical assistance. Its grant is figured the same way.

General Assistance, the town-run aid of last resort that the state pays 70 percent of, helped 18,563 people from July to mid-December 2025, nearly all of them with housing. A 2023 law requires the state to track how long people stay on it. The state says it can't build that database with the money it has, and asked the Legislature to drop the requirement.

And the Legislature's own watchdog, the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability, has never published a review of General Assistance or of the state's shelter grants.

Sources: MaineHousing, Emergency Shelter and Housing Assistance Program, 2026 Program Guide; MaineHousing, Homeless Solutions Rule (99-346 C.M.R. ch. 19), with the agency's responses to comments; Maine DHHS, Municipal General Assistance Program 2025 Biennial Report; Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability, reports

The wait

Maine's Housing First law passed in 2023. No one has moved in yet.

Building takes time, and Housing First does one thing well. A 2020 review of the research in The Lancet Public Health found it gets people with high needs into homes and keeps more of them there. It found no measurable effect on psychiatric symptoms, drug use, income, or jobs. It's one tool, and it should be measured like every other.

Sources: 22 M.R.S. §20-A, Housing First Program (enacted in the 2023 budget, Public Law 2023, chapter 412, Part AAAA); Maine DHHS and MaineHousing, Home for Good Annual Program Evaluation, 2025 Annual Report, February 2026; U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Point-in-Time counts by state, 2007-2025; City of Bangor, Yellen Pines questions and answers, August 28, 2026; Aubry and others, The Lancet Public Health, 2020 (systematic review)

What people see

Mainers of every party want this fixed.

Both are true, which is why the answer has to be treatment and housing, in that order for the people who need treatment first.

Sources: UNH Survey Center, Pine Tree State Poll, February 2023; UChicago Harris and AP-NORC poll, August 2025 (national)

What we'd do

Count the people helped, not the people served.

Counting is possible. When Bangor closed its largest encampment in 2025, the city reported what became of all 96 people who lived there: 28 into housing, 11 to a shelter, 11 to jail, 10 to a friend's couch, and more than a third to places unknown. Every program that takes public money should be able to say as much.

Source: Bangor Daily News, April 14, 2025

1. A bed and a plan.

   No one should have to sleep outside when there's a bed. Shelter comes with a plan and treatment to go with it.

2. Children first, then work.

   Change Maine's scoring so families with young children move up the list, as federal guidance allows, and give weight to people ready to work.

3. Back the landlords who say yes.

   Restore and strengthen a state guarantee that covers damage and unpaid rent for landlords who rent to program tenants. Give them a fast, fair way to settle a failed tenancy: a court magistrate, or a referee both sides choose once a dispute arises, deciding the rent and damages in one hearing, with the guarantee paying the landlord when the landlord wins. Our housing plan puts numbers on both.

4. Treatment that follows the person.

   An apartment isn't treatment. Fund care that follows people into housing, and use the court-ordered outpatient treatment law Maine already has: in October 2024, 78 people were under such orders from the two state hospitals.

5. Enforce the law, and offer recovery.

   Drug possession is a crime in Maine, and it should stay one. Pair enforcement with the treatment courts already running in 14 of Maine's 16 counties, so the way out runs through recovery, not back to the street.

6. Pay for results.

   Tie shelter and service grants to what the state's own guide already measures: days to a home, moves into permanent housing, and returns to the street.

7. Count it, and audit it.

   Build the General Assistance database the law already requires, publish every program's results every year, and ask the Legislature's watchdog to review Maine's homelessness spending, program by program.

8. Build the homes.

   No plan works without enough places to live. That's why housing supply comes first on our list.

Sources: Portland Press Herald, October 18, 2024 (Maine's court-ordered outpatient treatment law); Maine Continuum of Care, FY2026 federal application (Adult Treatment and Recovery Courts); 17-A M.R.S. §1107-A, unlawful possession of scheduled drugs

Help should be judged by how many people it lifts out, not by how many it keeps.